I have two boys, one under 5, the other under 10. I am trying to get good data to determine if vaccination is risky or not.
Recently a relative sent me a story about MIS-C, which seems to be new. But trying to get good data on other things like myocarditis risk/rates is like sorting for a needle in a scrapyard.
Does anyone have any good data, preferably raw statistics on this?
> I am trying to get good data to determine if vaccination is risky or not.
Rather than giving you a list of work that you may suspect of being curated, I will show you how to quickly find what you're looking for.
One of the great things about the National Library of Medicine is that a human looks at each and every paper and assigns standardized semantic tags to it. These are called "MeSH terms" and you can filter the entire library by them.
You mentioned interest in myocarditis, and the following would be an appropriate search query in pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov for this topic:
The "mh" selects articles that were tagged with that MeSH term. The "majr" selects articles that were tagged with that MeSH term and were mainly about that term. In this case, the structured query drills down from thousands of potential results to 61 results, which is manageable to triage manually.
You would probably need some basic domain knowledge to interpret medical publications in peer reviewed journals. I'm not saying they are the same expertise, just that "requiring expertise" as a prerequisite is pretty reasonable.
The overwhelming conclusion I've drawn from this pandemic is that it's ultimately about people's level of trust in their own ability to analyze data vs trust in authority figures. There have been so many examples of 'vaccines cause harm!' articles that fundamentally misunderstand basic statistical concepts like selection bias or simpson's paradox (see the covid-datascience.com blog for lots more of these).
Is your prior on 'I will not make a significant analytic error' higher than 'the FDA analyzed the available data correctly'?
In reality, few people have the time or want to make the effort to comb through and analyze original sources. So most of us rely to varying extent on who we trust and consider to have accurate opinions or assessments.
One huge problem with COVID has been the emergence of essentially propaganda pieces masquerading as detailed, rigorous analysis. These give people a false sense of confidence- "Hey I've done my research!" when in reality you can google for 20 minutes and come up with impressive looking links for whatever view you are already predisposed to believe.
I'm sure these existed before, but COVID has taken things to another level.
> few people have the time or want to make the effort to comb through and analyze original sources
And they lack the expertise regardless, and they can't gain the expertise without schooling and professional experience. We are dependant on others, whether we like it or not.
> the emergence of essentially propaganda pieces masquerading as detailed, rigorous analysis
> I'm sure these existed before, but COVID has taken things to another level.
I don't know that it's another level. The long, incredibly detailed dives into one issue or another have been around for decades.
This is essentially what I expected when the pandemic started. We created a monster of misinformation and disinformation, the 'post-truth' society; the consequences are obviously and completely predictable.
> I'm sure these existed before, but COVID has taken things to another level.
Similar as to the other posted said - this type of fiction writing has existed before COVID. It's just that now you're all reading the same statistical fiction.
Essentially - one genre of statistical fiction got popular. Whereas before everyone was reading different genres.
> , few people have the time or want to make the effort to comb through and analyze original sources.
I mean, unless it's your profession, you're not. At best, you're reading an article (with summarized data that you hope was aggregated correctly) in a journal. To the best of my knowledge, the raw datasets that those are based on are rarely shared.
And your trust in the government. If your prior on the government is that they aren't to be trusted then it doesn't matter how good of a job the FDB did in analyzing the data -- you aren't going to believe what they release to the public.
I think this is the bigger issue. Most people I know who say, "I'll do my own research" are the same people who asked me what kind of computer to buy. And they know a lot more about technology than medicine. But its they don't trust the government.
I'm triple-vaccinated, but I did it grudgingly, after reviewing as much data as I could.
My prior is "public health is top priority for the powers that be and my individual health is not". Throughout this pandemic this has been demonstrated repeatedly.
Therefore when authorities insist that I do something, I have to try to look up stats for my age group and category and do my best to interpret that correctly as a layman, because authorities might be asking me to do something that is safer for the general public at my expense as an individual.
For me it was the opposite. Back in Sept/October govt was telling people "no need to get a booster; it's fine" and then "get it after 6 months only" while reading about the Israel experience would have told you that it was safe and prudent to just get it after 5mo
I can't find much besides models for < 16 unfortunately.
However, for 16-40, Patone, et al[1] estimates that myocarditis incidence is around 2/mil for AstraZeneca, 1/mil for Pfizer per does, and 6/mil for Moderna first dose, 10/mil for the second, compared to 40/mil for an active infection.
Singer, el al[2] (pre-print) states that males < 20 are roughly 6x less likely to develop myocarditis from vaccination compared to an infection.
The AMA[3] also has some info on both myocarditis and MIS-C. 95% of those who developed MIS-C were unvaccinated, and up to 40% required some sort of respiratory or cardiovascular life support (compare to 0% of those vaccinated). Also states ages 12-15 appear less likely to develop myocarditis than the 16 - ~40 range.
Everything I've read so far is that myocarditis from vaccination usually resolves fairly quickly.
Do these papers differentiate infection with and without vaccination? Meaning, if an unvaxxed person has X myocarditis risk from the vaccine, and Y from infection, what is the myocarditis risk of infection after vaccination?
I haven't seen anything comparing the two yet, but I would be interested in seeing that.
I'll note that in general, I have seen studies indicating that the risk of both MIS-C (linked in GP) and long-covid[1][2] are decreased when comparing vaccinated/unvaccinated post active infection. I've also seen reports that those unvaccinated who experience long-covid sometimes see reduced / cleared symptoms after subsequent vaccination.[3] We also know that antibody titer levels seem to be correlated with a reduction in infection, which is why when those begin to fall off we see more breakthrough infections. And finally we know that building long term T and B cells tends to see a quicker, more effective immune response, both of which should be created post-vaccination.
Given that, I would speculate that vaccination is likely to reduce overall proliferation of cell infection (including directly infecting cardiac tissue via the ACE2 receptors) via having more free-floating antibodies in your system, and is likely to reduce the overall immune-mediated inflammatory response to the virus as it can respond more quickly before the virus has had a chance to proliferate as much. Both of these (reduced inflammation, reduced cell infection) should reduce the risk of myocarditis as a result of infection. And I would speculate that that tracks with other observed reduction of symptoms of infection (MIS-C, long-covid).
Again, speculation on my part; I would definitely want to see studies to confirm or refute that.
I'm saying this as someone who lost a family member to a combination of myocarditis and endocarditis resulting from a flu infection: I'm not attempting to downplay it. Myocarditis has the potential to be extremely serious, especially for those with pre-existing heart problems.
However, _in my opinion_ with how infectious omicron is, it is likely inevitable that everyone will eventually be exposed. The literature (linked in my GP) currently seems to indicate that vaccines have a lower risk of myocarditis than an active SARS-CoV-2 infection. Most literature that I've seen (so far) indicates that occurrences of post-vaccination myocarditis tends to be rare, and not life-threatening, and the patients tend to recover quickly.[1]
I'm not aware of any great data on myopericarditis for very young people, and not as many have been vaccinated, so I extrapolate from older age groups:
Of 3 482 295 individuals vaccinated with BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech), 48 developed myocarditis or myopericarditis within 28 days from the vaccination date compared with unvaccinated individuals (adjusted hazard ratio 1.34 (95% confidence interval 0.90 to 2.00); absolute rate 1.4 per 100 000 vaccinated individuals within 28 days of vaccination (95% confidence interval 1.0 to 1.8)).
-https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068665
Among more than 2.5 million vaccinated HCO members who were 16 years of age or older, 54 cases met the criteria for myocarditis. The estimated incidence per 100,000 persons who had received at least one dose of vaccine was 2.13 cases (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.56 to 2.70). The highest incidence of myocarditis (10.69 cases per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 6.93 to 14.46) was reported in male patients between the ages of 16 and 29 years. A total of 76% of cases of myocarditis were described as mild and 22% as intermediate; 1 case was associated with cardiogenic shock. After a median follow-up of 83 days after the onset of myocarditis, 1 patient had been readmitted to the hospital, and 1 had died of an unknown cause after discharge.
-https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110737
So vaccine-related myopericarditis looks rare and mild. Effectively, and possibly literally, no one dies as a result. I actually ended up with a probable case after my second dose, but it was extremely mild (no functional impairment, just periodic discomfort for some months). I suspect most cases are something similar- not fun, but not spooky. I'm not a doctor nor do I have any relevant specialty, but I'm reasonably sure that reducing incidence of MIS-C or other rare severe outcomes of covid is a net win in younger people.
I saw a comment here recently with data that showed the rates for myocarditis for both covid and vaccinations respectively, I recall the chance of developing myocarditis after vaccination being 4x lower than after getting covid.
Assuming that's right (perhaps someone more knowledgeable can provide a source), this seems to imply that vaccination reduces the risk of developing myocarditis by 4x, assuming everyone will eventually be infected.
I'm also curious what effect age has on the risk in both cases, ie. if the same ratio holds for young people.
I believe that is correct. I don't have a great source handy, but here's a preprint which agrees:
Conclusions: Myocarditis (or pericarditis or myopericarditis) from primary COVID19 infection occurred at a rate as high as 450 per million in young males. Young males infected with the virus are up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as those who have received the vaccine.
Not sure about ratio age dependency. My prior would be that it is similar, since I don't have any reason to suspect otherwise. Still not a doctor or biologist though :P
Males under 40 roughly have the highest risk from multiple Moderna doses, followed by infection, followed by two Astra doses, followed by two Pfizer doses. I expect two COVID infections would increase the risk like it seems to do with the vaccines.
This is very interesting to me if true, both because
- I thought the risk from getting an infection would be much higher than any vaccine combination (but here multiple Moderna doses seems to increase the risk even more)
- again, if this is true it still validates the rest of my reasoning: except for multiple doses of Moderna any other combination of mainstream vaccines seems to be safer than actually getting the infection
(I note that there is a lot of uncertainty which is why I use "seems to be" instead of "is".)
The "risk from getting an infection" includes many other side effects besides myocarditis, I would not evaluate the risks from an unvaccinated viral infection (which can cause 100 other things besides myocarditis) vs the risk from vaccination (or vaccination + viral infection, which the most likely long term outcome) on the myocarditis axis alone.
Yes that's fair, but the risk profile from the vaccine is also not just relegated to myocarditis, that's just what's been getting attention. It will probably be years before we have an accurate risk assessment of both infection and vaccines. Given the availability of vaccines, it still makes sense to be choosier if you're in a potentially vulnerable population, which is what the paper suggests.
> I expect two COVID infections would increase the risk like it seems to do with the vaccines.
Then the relevant metric should be infection vs vaccine+infection, given that natural immunity is better than vaccine-conferred immunity (which seems very bad with Omicron)
I was going to wait until all of the first world health bureaucracies cleared it. But now my kids had covid (before they were approved even in the US) and it wasn't a big deal. So I'm not going to get them shots until the natural immunity is proven to fade, which may be never.
Ask your pediatrician. If you don't trust that they know better, get a new pediatrician. I'm not being glib, this person has made it through a grueling education of their undergrad, med school, and residency. They are well acquainted with hard sciences and research. If you don't trust them on their area of expertise, then that is the problem.
Anecdotally, every doctor I know has gotten their own children vaccinated as soon as it was available (or enrolled them in clinical trials, to get it earlier).
Really tough to tell because there's a lack of data. Parents aren't vaccinating their young children because they have the strongest immune systems and it's unnecessary.
Here are CDC submitted reports of myo/pericarditis seen so far broken out by age:
So take from that what you will.
And if this is your first time encountering VAERS, the reports actually submitted are estimated to be between 1 and 10% of total adverse effects experienced.
If you're into reading studies, here are some that are largely unknown:
>VAERS is an open database, it can be easily submitted to by anyone, it's not a good source of truth and may contain statistical bias.
This is 100% true, but it leaves out some context.
Prior to covid, it was thought that vaccine side effects were statistically underreported by a significant amount in VAERS. For the signal we are seeing in VAERS to be totally spurious seems highly unlikely, given this fact. It's also worth noting that effects which have a significant time-delay are unlikely to be captured.
All this is to say: yes the data are noisy, but we'd need to erase/explain away the numbers by at least an order of magnitude to erase the spike we are seeing, and that seems like a tall order.
Other vaccines e.g. the common "childhood" ones are uncontroverisal and given on a rather steady basis as people reach the appropriate ages. The COVID vaccines were pushed to everybody in a time window of months, and with a huge amount of controversy and media attention. Given that, I would expect a spike not only in the raw number of adverse reactions, but also a higher proportion of them actually being reported.
> All this is to say: yes the data are noisy, but we'd need to erase/explain away the numbers by at least an order of magnitude to erase the spike we are seeing, and that seems like a tall order.
Interesting comment. It's so funny, whenever anyone posts a VAERS link (literally the only visibility the US public has into adverse events) people come out of the woodwork to mention that anyone can submit a report. Other than VAERS, we have public health authorities which routinely lie to the public simply to get vaccines in arms, regardless of the truth or consequences. Too many examples to list here but Fauci continuously upping the percentage of people that would need to get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity comes to mind. I guess he left out the part that herd immunity isn't even possible with the vaccines.
We're relying on proven liars to get our health information? These are our CHILDREN for God's sake.
I'll go ahead and list the whoppers from the mayo clinic site:
- A COVID-19 vaccine can prevent kids from getting and spreading the COVID-19 virus.
The vaccines in no way, shape or form prevent someone from getting or spreading COVID-19
- COVID-19 vaccines have not been linked to infertility or miscarriage.
- These vaccines were approved quickly because the red tape was cut — not corners.
Please see the story of Pfizer whistle-blower Brook Jackson
- In the U.S., the delta (B.1.617.2) variant is now the most common COVID-19 variant.
Omicron is over 95% of cases. Why would they conceal that? Ahh, because the FAQ question was "Do COVID-19 vaccines protect against the variants?" You'd have to admit the vaccines do next to nothing versus Omicron unless you have had a booster in the last 10 weeks.
One more thing to consider is that the virus is also able to cause myocarditis, especially if you don't rest long enough even if feeling fine. In fact, the virus can potentially cause additional complications even with mild symptoms. There are also things we don't really understand yet with post-viral syndromes which affects many people (disclaimer: Epstein-Barr / Mono messed me up, personally).
This isn't unique to SARS-CoV-2 either, it's a more general viral infection thing and can happen just as well with influenza. With Omicron, it's also very likely that people will get it sooner or later - vaccinated or not.
Granted, most myocarditis goes unnoticed and recovers very well with a bit of rest.
> Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they did rigourous testing
Reminder that the two most senior FDA vaccine oversight officials resigned in protest before the age 5-11 EUA was approved.
Reminder that the previous FDA commissioner currently sits on Pfizer's board.
Reminder that regulatory capture of the FCC, SEC, and other govt. agencies is popularly accepted as fact, but somehow the FDA is immune to that criticism.
OK, now do that for the 50 or so other national health agencies that have independently approved these vaccines. Or did you forget that these vaccines have been reviewed and approved by thousands of qualified staff all over the world?
Every western country except the UK (who were criticized) approved it after the US. Many of those deferred to the FDA's judgment and rubber stamped as a formality.
> “I am pleased that Pfizer’s vaccine has undergone a critical phase with FDA approval,” said Health Minister Yuli Edelstein on Friday, just after the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted in support of the agency granting Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which paved the way for the vaccine’s approval. “This is a huge message for Israeli citizens as well.”
He said that he instructed his ministry’s staff to review the approval and submit their recommendations in the coming days so that vaccinations could start before the end of the month.
This was all fast-tracked with countries wanting to get in line for doses, remember?
Thinking-in-reverse, if the FDA flagged/rejected the approval, how many western countries do you think would have approved it within the same timeframe?
> Since it was approved for children by the FDA I assume they did rigorous testing
I wouldn't make this assumption, especially in light of the the conditions under which it was approved (extreme political pressure, rushed/bleeding edge data, etc.) It's probably fine, but my kids aren't going to be first in line because they are in the control group (https://xkcd.com/2576/).
it's worth the OP trying to find data on how much risk covid presents to their children and what the risks of the vaccine are. the UK has this risk calculator for COVID in adults: https://qcovid.org/ . I'm not sure if there is anything similar for children. probably, the risk of the vaccine or covid is so low for children it doesn't really matter what you do.
Children with no commorbidities have NO reason to get exposed to the risk of taking the vacine. Yes, it's a small risk, but ANY vaccine must be a cost benefit weighted decision. Rabies is a 100% lethal disease, but that is not a valid reason for everyone to get vaccinated for it, the risks of vaccinating everyone in this case outweigh the risk that a randomly selected person would eventually die from rabies. This whole discussion is so stupid, from the beggining everyone could see the stats and see who was at real risk or not from this disease.
Children are still susceptible to long-term complications from getting covid. Like you said, it's a cost benefit decision, but there's real risks associated with children getting covid that seem to be going unacknowledged given that, unlike rabies, millions are going to be infected with covid.
Also at this point EVERYONE is going to be infected by COVID. It's a highly contagious respiratory virus that's not only carried by humans, but animals too. This fantasy that all we have to do is vaccinate everyone and we will be alright really needs to die.
Vaccines are still shown to reduce risk of hospitalization and death even with omicron. So, if everyone is going to get it, wouldn't you rather be more protected when you get it?
Risk of hospitalization for children aged < 5 years with Omicron is quite a bit higher than previous variants. Take a look at the CDC data, compare age groups this year vs. one year earlier.
This trend exists because children are being tested for COVID after being admitted to the hospital for entirely unrelated issues (broken bones, etc). They're in the hospital _with_ COVID, not in the hospital _because_ of COVID.
I hear people say that, but is there research backing it up? I'm a bit dubious because inevitability is a common fall-back position in public affairs, similar to climate change deniers saying that climate change is inevitable so we just have to learn to adjust. They still get what they want, and try to create despair in their opponents.
It's gone endemic, the inevitability is on par with the common cold; you're almost certainly going to get exposed to some variant of it.
Plus AIUI Omicron has demonstrated recombinant replication, which means we're playing a flu-like cat and mouse game with the vaccines. Nobody in their right mind would argue we have any hope of effectively vaccinating everyone against influenza.
> Tell this mom that the infinitesimal chance that her child would have from COID side affects was worth it for the problems she is now facing
That's an awful way to analyze risk.
If you have a one in a million risk of something, and you trade it for a different but nearly-identical one in a million risk for the same thing, and then get the bad outcome, you did not make the wrong choice. Let alone if you traded for a lower risk.
Every step you take, you trade out trillions of potential futures. You are always, always creating new risks and destroying old risks. A decision like getting vaccinated is easy to point at and say "oh I shouldn't have done it" but you could just as realistically say "if I hadn't eaten tuna seven weeks ago these problems wouldn't have happened".
You do not get to compare the outcome of a specific case, only knowable in hindsight, with the "infinitesimal risk" of the alternative.
The point is that people need to stop presuming that these vaccines are without risks of their own. This is proven false and the true risk is still uncertain. Officials are only recently acknowledging for example that vaccines can influence monthly cycles - that was just a cooky conspiracy a few months ago.
Data collection regarding adverse events was laughably inadequate based on testimony over Pfizer's clinical trial protocol, and their data is still not available for review by anyone other than the FDA, which is known to suffer from regulatory capture. Rosy claims about the vaccines have been repeatedly walked back...the safety of these vaccines is likely overstated.
> The point is that people need to stop presuming that these vaccines are without risks of their own.
That's a good point, but it's not the point being made when someone links to a side effect report and implies it was wrong to get vaccinated, as if vaccines need to meet an impossible 0-side-effect standard.
COVID isn't deadly like rabies either. Indeed COVID is turning out to be less deadly than the flu for the vast majority of people, especially the more recent variants. While being far more virulent they are also far less likely to make one seriously ill, let alone kill.
It wasn't. Heart disease and cancer kill far more people on an annual basis and nobody bats an eye. According to the CDC, these were the top 10 causes of death in 2020[1]:
* Heart disease: 696,962
* Cancer: 602,350
* COVID-19: 350,831
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 200,955
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 160,264
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 152,657
* Alzheimer’s disease: 134,242
* Diabetes: 102,188
* Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,544
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 52,547
> Heart disease and cancer kill far more people on an annual basis and nobody bats an eye
I mean there are massive institutes, companies, and laboratories engaged in research on both these topics, tons of fund-raising, campaigns to improve diet and exercise, shockingly expensive treatments and so on. Other than all of that, yes, nobody bats an eye.
They clearly mean from one specific event. What one event in the USA has lead to 2 million deaths? You're combining all deaths and treating it as if it were the same thing.
No? Are we in an influenza pandemic or epidemic right now? Again, we're talking about events here.
There have been six of them in the last 140 years with respect to influenza. The Spanish Flu pandemic killed 675k (in the USA, like 50 mil worldwide or something wild like that.)
Two of my three children are in the vaccination age range (edit the 5-10 range that was the most recent change) and I did a dive in the primary data as I was worried about the risks/benefits of myocarditis vs risk of severe COVID (we had also had COVID in April 2020, but I was the only one tested positive because at that time only healthcare workers could get a test if you weren't hospitalized). I hope this resource helps you, it helped convince me that the benefits outweighed the risks:
Important to note that Children's Health Defense is a highly suspect organization. Rated "conspiracy-pseudoscience"[1], described as "one of the main sources of misinformation on vaccines"[2], with numerous articles describing their fake health posts on social media[3][4] and shady leadership[5][6].
Not saying everything from that site should be discarded, but should definitely be taken with a grain of salt.
What data do you want? The all-mortality risk for vaccinated individuals is lower than unvaccinated.
Unless your children have special circumstances, the answer is to vaccinate.
The risk rates for myocarditis 1) extremely low to be caused by the vaccine 2) lower than the risk of P(Myocarditis | COVID)*P(COVID). That is, the risk of catching COVID AND developing Myocarditis is higher than developing it from the vaccine.
This comment is saying that vaccinated people are more likely to die than the unvaccinated. Sounds like a lie, but nope! It’s true. Why? The unvaccinated population is much, much younger and healthier than the vaccinated. 95% of the above-80 cohort is vaccinated. Essentially nobody under 5 is. This is called a confounding variable, and is used to spread fake news.
I have two boys, one under 5, the other under 10. I am trying to get good data to determine if vaccination is risky or not.
Recently a relative sent me a story about MIS-C, which seems to be new. But trying to get good data on other things like myocarditis risk/rates is like sorting for a needle in a scrapyard.
Does anyone have any good data, preferably raw statistics on this?
Thank you in advance!